God Killer
by MisterMediocre
Summary: Godlike power cast aside. The Blood King will fall. Spilling innocent blood. The God King will fall. They are both a means to an end and will see that end whatever it takes.


This was born of a love of DD and Fantasy. Enjoy.

"Guh!" It was a swift blow to the gut. Had he anything in his stomach to vomit up, it would have been all over the man and surely earned him an even more severe beating. No, Levi grunted, dry heaved, bile rising and the bitter taste of iron filling his mouth as he accidentally bit his tongue in the aftermath. A sun-weathered fist tight over the bone of knuckles slammed in to his face and turned his head sharply down toward the rising knee. Crack! Blood erupted from his nose in a heavy gout. Levi was roughly shoved back against the exterior of... Some building. Hard wood at his back, two laughing drunks beating the sin out if him in the middle of the night... It could get worse.

The warmth of his blood dripped down his chin, dripped on to his chest and spread across his shirt. Oo, he was already feeling a little woozy! "Street scum just need ta die~" Said a member of the Golden Armada drunkenly drawled with a wicked sneer on his face. His chuckling cohort took Levi by a handful of his tousled black hair and pulled him forward right into the armor clad shin that was thrown at him. Levi's head whipped back with a hard thud against the wall. His eyes rolled back from spreading pain, from his throbbing skull and the undoubtable concussion to the comparatively minute searing sting of his bleeding split lip.

His dark blue eyes rolled back and fixed into a glare up at both armored soldiers of the crown, a smile filled with red washed teeth spreading across his face defiantly.

"Gonna... Have to... Try... Harder...!" Levi laughed, spitting blood on to the boots of one. Where anyone might sneer, the drunkards just grinned and that left the urchin to grimace. They would. They would pulverize him, beat him further than black and blue, until he was no longer his typical natural dark tan and just red. 'I don't think I can live through this one...' His body was already growing cold, black creeping in from the edges of his vision. Was he... Losing consciousness? Heh, maybe it was his will to live, or what was left...

 _"Survive."_

His eyes snapped open to... Darkness. Pure black. A void where, as he felt an overwhelming sense of cold and loss, where the light of the world and the human spirit came to die. This choking pressure gripped his lungs, his throat and it felt like tears stung at his eyes, but it was impossible to tell as his skin grew so very, very cold...

What the young urchin could only imagine was death with eyes wide open melted away. It left him in the void, skin prickling from the lingering cold and patches of frost clinging to his body. It felt shadow had a form, a writhing mass of incorporealness undulating softly around him. What a nauseating feeling.

It all paled in comparison to the sudden overbearing presence that both felt like death itself stood in front if him, looming over, and that he was an ant before something otherworldly, titanic, bigger and more than he could possibly even fathom. "Survive." A whisper echoing a million times in his ears, drowning him in this odd, soft cacophony.

It was like shadow itself speaking from all around, causing a gnawing itch in the back of his mind... No, behind his skull. A raspy whisper as clear as thunder in his ears, send chill bumps across his skin and making every strand of hair stand on end under this foreboding weight. Then it all stopped, different words ringing in his head, "The king must die? Yes?" The mere mention of that thing that sneers down on them all from its throne sent a white hot fury through his veins even the inky blackness could not numb. "Survive."

Levi suddenly felt a weight in his right hand that was not there before. He could wrench away, but... Why? To live, to watch that thing die horribly, painfully... That was a compelling enough reason. His fingers wrapped hesitantly around something slender, rounded... Like a hilt. His grip grew white-knuckle tight. Yes... This was the correct decision. The darkness receded and the young man found himself being lifted by his bloodied, dirtied shirt collar in the clutch of one of the drunken knights.

"Don't worry~ We'll be nice enough ta cart yer corpse to the Graves!" They let out barking laughter reeking of booze. Levi's stayed wide, heart beat thumping louder and louder and louder until it was the only sound.

The face of one morphed to shock and the mocking laughter he could no longer hear was surely silenced, replaced by wet gurgling, in the throat of one as it was pierced, cut and ripped open. The knight could do nothing as the stumped blade's edge sank into flesh, muscle and his windpipe before it was dragged down, forced down in eager more like, until it met bone and even the resistance didn't stop the blank-eyed urchin from furiously yanking down again and again and again! Levi tore it from the man's chest as red ichor drenched the front of his shiny half-plate armor. Washing down the crown symbol backed by a crossed longsword and battle axe, the insignia of the God King Altus.

The other was left pale with shock and horror, too completely engrossed in the scene of his twitching friend growing lifeless on the ground to notice Levi moving in his seated position.

The tips of his outstretched pointer and middle fingers crackled with dark blue sparks. A black orb formed and a low hum hit his ear. It grew, pulsed with gathering power, a faint blue glow surrounding the black as it glittered with arcing blue sparks. It was even simpler than thinking it, just letting it go. A crackling beam of black force outlined in dark blue fired from Levi's fingertips and collided with a wet, heavy snap of bone with the man's chestplate. A gout of red flew from his mouth, eyes bulging in his sockets, as his body was flung in to the air by the blast. In that slow motion instant where the young man looked past his smoking fingertips at the airborne victim of his attack, at their armor; cracked, burned, torn and sunken in. Cascading down his front was blood on to their dark trousers in mere seconds.

The hard impact of the now corpse against the ground made the young man flinch. Levi came to, panting furiously like he had be deprived of precious air for far too long, and surveyed his surroundings. It was over. One man lay dead at his feet with eyes rolled back in to his skull, clutching the open gash through his neck, painted in his own life blood and laying in a pool of the rest. The other, several meters away, laying lifeless after... That.

"They deserved it...!" He growled, running a hand up his face and smearing freckles of blood across his face. Through his hair and back, slick with blood as well and streaking it through his black frizzy hair and making a small section stand. He stopped and slowly withdrew his hand to bring it in front of his face, "They deserved it..." He whispered, "They deserve it and more."

Levi slowly inspected his fingers, his hand, like a newborn toddler realizing they are there. Like his own left hand was alien to him. Then he brought the weapon to his eyes. A medium blade, not a wide one and barely longer than that of a dagger, with a single edge. It was serrated, but not in any official crafting. No, the steel was just that rusted and frayed and jagged that its edge was saw-toothed. It was a tearing, ripping weapon in its condition and barely useful for that. It had a simple cylindrical hilt long enough for two hands, or would have been were it not broken and showing a sharpened, rusted point of the long tang near the end, with a chipped, oval shaped guard and a measly foot of rusted blade. Where from...? A sound painful throb from his head nearly brought the young man to his knees.

He quietly seethed from the pain.

"What was that sound?" A female voice in the distance caught his ear.

"I think it came from over there!" And a male.

The young man, now a murderer, felt his blood run cold in his veins. He gripped the hilt of the wicked sword a little tighter, heart racing as his world slowed to a crawl. The clank of armor and heavy falls of boot clad feet approaching sounded far closer than it really was. Another patrolling party. A pair thar was likely far more sober, but no less of a problem for him: The one alive with the blood of soldiers under the King's military banner at his feet, on his weapon.

He could stay and fight. Where was there to run? He'd fight until killed. Even if he managed to pull out a win, with his injuries, how could he possibly outrun the the witch hunt that would hound him to hell? Fight and die. That sounded like the least painful route...

Levi chuckled to himself, "And I thought this would be my chance..." Prepared to fight and die, he would maybe take one or two, a third if lucky, with him in to the grave. He took a couple steps over the corpses of the fallen soldiers, weapon in hand and shaking, toward the end of the alley he had been dragged in to. He could jump one at the very least... Heart thumping in his chest, Levi knew he did not want to die. Not yet, at just twenty-two, with a promise to live for. A pipe dream now, as it was then, still... He wanted to survive to see a change. Take part and fight for that change.

 _"Survive."_

Where he would have fought tooth and nail until his punctured lungs filled with red, sticky ichor and he drew his last breath of this stale air, that fight instinct in this seemingly hopeless situation for the urchin melted away. It was time to fly! His feet thundered across the road, small pebbles and bursts of dusts popping up in his speedy wake. A surge of something greater, more than just a rush of adrenaline through his veins, welled up inside! Wind buffeted his face as he ran at a pace he had not thought he was capable of even in the most dire of circumstances. He blinked briefly and found himself approaching the border to this particular section of the slums he had been trekking through during the day, in to another. The buildings and few people out so late were a blur. Was that the sound of a horn calling to guards? Surely it was because of the corpses? They would be searching for the murderer? Him? A scapegoat? Some innocent as a warning to the masses? No no no, stop thinking! Run! He repeated that same word in his head over and over and over as minutes felt like seconds,hours like minutes. Time bled together in to a great mess where the fleeing urchin was focused on one thing alone.

Run.

His lungs were already on fire, but something was controlling him! It was impossible to be happy about his escape when control of his legs was not his own! The guards that had been on approach surely gave chase, if they had even noticed the fleeing urchin in the first place, and he would have loved to have had a seat to view his escape from another angle. A battered, bleeding street urchin and murderer outrunning the guards and putting miles between them.

The next borough was a blur, and the next... Every time Levi blinked he was nearing the edge yet another section of the expansive slums of the capital city. He would feel himself stumble, but never fall and keep moving on in to the night. If he fell, slowed,then he would die. He couldn't die yet.

Levi kept running, and running, and running, in to the distance far and away from the scene. Then the town. The full moon overhead dimly lit his way, even when his blurring vision could hardly make out the real dirt path from the triple he was seeing. Heart thumping so hard in his ribcage it hurt, ragged breaths he dragged in to his aching lungs burning going in and out. Sweat poured down his brow, cool him in the breeze blowing against him as he ran and making his clothing cling. Levi kept running.

 _"Survive."_

The flood of energy and the unstoppable urge to run suddenly left his body. Exhaustion took its toll quickly; limbs heavy and shaking, lungs burning and chest prickling, shock gripping his heart and making his head spin.

His vision slipped in to darkness and Levi had already lost consciousness before hitting the ground, unable to feel the hard thud or the sharp pain as his temple struck a small stone and red droplets ran on to the earth.

 _"Survive."_

A whisper as loud as thunder awoke him from the darkness and him, a simple human mote of life in this tremendous universe, less than that even, watched a truly unfathomable creature of darkness stride across through the planes high above, far below and beyond the reach of even imagination. With terrifying might it slew beings of equal measure in their colossal scale and the magnitude of their very beings just from a glimpse at them as these events flowed like water in passing. The darkness eventually curled in on itself, roared and tore away from a figure with in.

The shreds of dark matter that flew away encircled him in a whirlwind that blocked all vision and soon solidified in to nothing. Green light soon freckled the space in his field of view and ate away at the darkness like it was a cocoon around him. The little human found himself now in an dark, quiet, lonesome place. He stood in the center of a wide city street, wisps of white vapor that was his own breath rising up before his eyes. The subzero chill started to settle in across his skin and... There was no tightness. It felt right, comfortable, to him. Tall, ragged stone buildings lined both sides in to the distance, up the road and along every branching path even as it started to curve up to a mighty, chilling fortress where his eyes caught sight of a shadow standing at the very top. The silence was maddening. Icy air filled his lungs, but did not burn. He could hear the sound of creeping frost forming on him.

This place was desolate. With eyes transfixed on the single massive shadow in the far distance, it unfurled great wings and a flicker of green light sent a shiver down his spine. A powerful gust, an ice storm, rushed by him buffeting his unmoving body with hard, jagged bits of solid water and cutting winds. When it passed and his vision clear, the streets were lined now with jagged patches of ice, and skeletal bodies. Dozens, hundreds, possible thousands of old and bare white bone or mummified and frozen blue flesh clinging to it, lining the streets in their ragged, tattered clothes. Once empty, numerous windows now with crowds gathered. Every eyeless socket was focused on him.

His feet started to move on their own and he could feel the mass of undead encroaching on his back. Within an instant he had closed the distance considerable and could see it, the shadow, clearly atop its kingdom although the castle seemed to get no closer after. He did not look upon it with fear. A terrifying visage that looked like the amalgamation of all of the evil of living kind. Stood upon a dark stone, icy and cracked fortress. It... Monstrous in size, opulent, and obcovered in oily fur, with a demonic mask of bone with multiple curved horns and in its hand a mace that stood taller than himself surely, capped with a single massive skull, open mouthed and the inner darkness of its multiple sockets and maw glowed with a sickly green flame. He did not fear it.

The little human knew deep within that he should just die before this thing. Logical thought to scream and be afraid was vastly overshadowed by a force outside of his control, in control of him. He started to run! The undead lunged with outstretched bony claws and suddenly brandished weapons, and he continued to push against the tide watching blade and magic force tear them apart on his seemingly endless path toward the seated monstrosity. Darkness crept in to the edges of his vision to tunnel and focus solely on it, this Death, and a violent chill stronger than ever blew at his back... But was different. The demonic being raised his mace and the green flame within grew brighter and brighter, but the black encompassing his vision was not stripped away. His own hand thrust forward and the devastating chill rocketed forward with force that obliterated the dead city with its winds and hail, tendrils of black shooting through the stone all on a course centered on that thing atop the castle.

Then the darkness consumed his sight entirely.

It broke and it was day, brighter than even, in an open field longer on the Prime Plane and before his very eyes amassed was a sea of countless, armored bodies clad in red, gold, brown and black leathers. Weapons ready, royal banners held high, they stood ready against him. Behind them, in the exact same position, he was faced with something far worse than a tremendous devil of unimaginable power and evil seated in the endless distance. A "man" sneered down from his golden throne of kneeling bodies with a sea of soldiers before the steps of the climb to reach their apex. From behind him, the golden rays of the sun illuminated him like some god and thousands upon thousands of people kneeled with hands raised with large smiles on their faces and sockets vacant of eyes.

This thing among them, whom sat atop them, as a God did not invoke fear, or awe, or blind worship in surely what was magnificent power. Not in the urchin who knew what it really was. He started to run toward it. Toward the object his darkest, bloodiest desires. His own raging heart was all he could hear hammering in his chest, in his ears. Levi could feel himself running faster, how his hand gripped his weapon tighter, "RRRRRAAAAAGGGHHH!" He was screaming in rage, bloody murder, for the grisly demise of that wretched, sneering thing! It would die! Torn asunder, cut down again and again!

This false god would be made to bleed and drown in all of the red! Where before the strokes of a wicked blade sheathed in ice like black exuding dark mist in his own hand were made beyond his control, his feet made to move, every slash slaying countless glowering men and women soldiers he was making of his own volition. He wanted to, needed to, get rid of every obstacle in his way to carved that wretched smile out of that thing's skull!

Red crawled in to his vision, heart pulsing in his ears and drowning out his own blood-curdling screams of rage. No! NO! He has to make it! Make it bleed! Make it die! Show the zealous and brainwashed what a dying God looks like and give hope to those under heel! Get revenge! As his tunneling vision focused more and more on that vile visage of a monster self-deemed god and ruler in the flesh of a man, narrowing more and more. A single word broke through the thundering beating of his own heart.

"Marina!"

This vision too was swallowed by the darkness, the encroaching flame narrowing in on that smug face looking down on him until there was no light left. He still moved, movements sluggish and hampered by pressure, like running through water. Every downward step that impacted with nothing sent a ripple, a single circular line of white, out into oblivion. It felt like miles running just a few steps more... He was tired. He wanted to stop.

"Survive." Came that soft, thundering voice from the expanse of black, right next to his ear yet so very, very far away. He couldn't stop yet. Not yet, not before he was safe to live just a little longer.

His eyes slowly drifted open to be greeted by the starry night sky. The fleeting memory of the cold was consumed by his conscious draw to the warmth of flame near him. The crackle of the flame licking away at the firewood hit his ears somehow past the beat of his own heart. It seemed he was not quite a. The smell of ash, burning tender and smoke filled his nostrils and even the cough such a deep inhale caused was pleasant to him... Until the ache in his lungs followed and a groan was forced past his lips with his breath. Levi raised shaking hands and laid them over his chest.

"He's awake, he's awake!"

"I noticed. Lucky him, there's still food left."

"You hog! You shoulda saved some more!"

"I killed it. We eat it."

He was not alone by the sound of two voices nearby that could be made out over the steady, rhythmic pump of his heart. The first voice, announcing him still among the living, sounded rather young. The other was older, deep, but still feminine and smooth. Strangers. That should have caused him concern, but all he could manage was to strain his neck and force his head to lull to his right and from there it rolled enough to get a look at just who joined him this night.

Two. Only two, and given his state of fatigue that put them at a severe advantage. Seated on logs by their glowing camp flame, light cast across them and shadows made to dance around them, was... His vision blurred. One was a taller blur for sure, nearly the height if the standing blur even as they sat. He wished to see them, especially the one coming for him should they carry a knife aimed with ill intent.

They, a young girl, came to his side with a water-skin. His immediate, jerking, reaction was to reach out for it. Take it away. Drain it dry. His muscles merely spasmed, body not readily responding to what he desperately wished for it to do and that left Levi to merely roll onto his side and flop weakly. His wide eyes and cracked lips moving with by gasps said it all when his actions were fruitless. She nodded, uncorked the water-skin and gently tipped it to let the liquid fall on to his lips.

Every sip he could managed, straining his neck to work for every drop, was sent from the Higher Planes themselves. Cool, Where...?" Levi could hear the hoarseness in his voice as his body started to wake up more and more.

"You're in the Everdeen Wildlands. Pretty fucking stupid place to nap without a fire, have no armor on and carry that junk sword around in," The dark skinned woman replied. Levi could at the very least furrow his brow his voice failed to ask again, just where the hell he was. Everdeen Wildlands? There was no such place. The confusion deeply etched across his face and the woman replied, "Everdeen Wildlands. On the continent of Irivander... North of Zaba-" When did she stop...? No. No, her lips moved, he could hear something. Her voice was muffled as if his head had been submerged in water. An icy, gripping dread, a chill, ran down his spine

His vision blurred and his world began to warp and spin. Those two words rocked his very being, sending Levi for a loop that lead to his faintness. Irivander... Across the Ysuelt Sea from the continent of Altussar. His home. Levi's world went black yet again.


End file.
